Best of #2

May 23, 2011

It's only been half a year since my last "best-of" post, but I feel the chaos of this blog at every turn; it's a cumulative thing. So... if you just got here and you want to know what's really delicious, here is the second installment.

The PPK's tempeh crab cakes are incredible, in terms of taste and texture. I have no idea what a crab cake actually tastes like, but I hope it's like these.

Stews! This complicated vegan bouillabaisse is totally worth the extra work. The flavors and textures are complex and beautiful. On a different note, this dhansak (left) is fantastic comfort. Squash, lentils, and lots of spices all work together.

Georgian cilantro sauce is very simple, but it tastes great on a huge variety of things and makes you view them in a different light.

I highly recommend the following three cookie recipes. Amazing almond cookies (right) get their stupendous texture from almond meal and brown rice syrup, and their amazing aromatickness from almond extract. Mamoul is a buttery, nut-filled shortbread, haunted by lots of orange blossom water. And these orange blossom anzac cookies continue my orange blossom craze, but in a very different textural direction, with oatmeal and coconut!

I'd always been afraid to make a vegan pie, since so many of the recipes out there seemed to imply that you had to use tofu or vegan cream cheese in order to get that thick creamy texture. But it turns out that all you need is a little cornstarch. This pumpkin pie with coconut cream is delicious! Another textural success is the coconut cardamom panna cotta, which uses agar flakes.